Have you looked at your windshield wipers lately?

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/02/have-you-looked-at-your-windshield-wipers-lately/

by Tomte • 9 years ago

262 158 9 years ago

Something cool I saw recently was that Mercedes has a new wiper system where the water spray/jet system is built into the wipers. So the screen gets sprayed milliseconds before the blade wipes it away.

johnchristopher• 9 years ago

That seems so obvious I wonder why it hasn't been done before. I suppose those wipers costs a bit more since it must include some kind of conducts for liquid and multiple hoses(?).

dogma11384• 9 years ago

Because these windshield wipers get clogged all the time and most people at best just use water and windex which doesn't bode well for precision made spray nozzles.

They also tend to leave a mess at any point where you actually need to use the liquid e.g. when you are driving through sand/dirt or mud but then again most people won't drive their CLX through a swamp or a sandstorm.

gonehome• 9 years ago

I think the Tesla Model X does this too. One major downside is needing the service center to replace the windshield wipers.

Since the advantage is minimal this overhead makes them generally more annoying than useful.

j3097736• 9 years ago

It's just a nozzle integrated in the arm, not part of the wiper blade.

sandworm1012• 9 years ago

More parts. Fluid needs travel through flexible and/or hinged parts. Longer hose. Cannot spray fluid without wipe (a big deal in cold weather). Fluid in hoses can be blocked (again, ice) whereas parts in engine compartment are kept warmer. No overspray beyond wiped area. No cross-coverage by multiple sprays in case one becomes blocked. Can the tesla sprays be aimed/adjusted by hand?

It's one of the many tesla features i just shake my head about. It sounds cool but there is good reason the other billion cars on the road went with the simple solutions. Water and wipers are cheap. Dont mess with a good thing.

jloughry• 9 years ago

Very old Volkswagen beetles used air pressure from the spare tyre instead of an electric washer fluid pump. I remember laughing so hard when I discovered that...

I was a teenager. Now that I'm an engineer, it's not so funny; it's an interesting design trade-off.

to3m3• 9 years ago

Also in Mercedes Benz wiper arms: the mono wiper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKGhKrQmK68

(The weather is too nice in this video, though, so you can't really see how much of the windscreen it manages to clean - however you can certainly see that it manages to trace out more of an ellipse than a circle.)

spitfire2• 9 years ago

Single wipers leave a huge blindspot of dirty windshield by the top corners where many other wipers wouldn't.

It was coo, but had drawbacks.

petercooper2• 9 years ago

I had an old 1996 C class with one of these. It worked surprisingly well and never broke.

jacquesm• 9 years ago

They're great but if that motor ever goes you will seriously regret it, big$ item and harder to replace than you'd think necessary.

bboreham• 9 years ago

Jaguar had that in 2005 at least.

spitfire2• 9 years ago

1986 XJ40 introduced it as far as I can tell. (Used to own an XJ40).

interfixus• 9 years ago

Isn't this stone age technology due for some twenty first century smarts? Teflon glass, anyone?

sandworm1012• 9 years ago

Where is the stone age tech? Automotive glass is being constantly improved. Other than being clear and made of some amount of glass, todays windshield is an iphone compared to the telegraphs of 50 years ago. Today's glass no longer shatters, no longer distorts vision, rarely chips and is often even trusted to provide structural support in a crash.

arethuza• 9 years ago

Also heated windscreens/windshields - which are brilliant, so much easier than scraping ice off by hand.

samwillis• 9 years ago

Actually, you are right. A lot of work has gone into developing hydrophobic coatings for cars (windows and bodywork) however they tend to wear off very quickly and so have never taken off.

Take a look on YouTube, some fun videos of cars going through mud and it not sticking one bit.

Here's one: https://youtu.be/TtntUSP-UeM

Animats• 9 years ago

Those coatings, like NeverWet, put down a surface with very tiny spikes. Water has too much surface tension to get down to the base of the spikes and adhere, so it falls off. The problem is that the spike structure is fragile and wears poorly. It's a cute novelty, but until somebody comes up with a tougher version, not very useful.

Kluny2• 9 years ago

It's so nice when you've got fresh rain-X on the windshield though. Doesn't last but one rainy day, but for that one day you feel like you're on the Enterprise with warp drive engaged, all the raindrops streaking away like stars.

acomjean2• 9 years ago

There is this stuff called "RainX"[1]. You apply it to your windshield and the rain beads off (hydrophobic). You can see really well even in heavy rain without wipers. (My dad used to use it on the family cars last century, and I still use it today).

It works great, though you have to reapply every few months when it wears off. And you can't apply it in the rain, so you have to remember ahead of time....

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain-X

CarVac• 9 years ago

Rain-X has wiper fluid that reapplies the treatment somehow. I haven't needed to manually reapply in over three years.

kevin_thibedeau• 9 years ago

RainX works well where the rain typically has large drops. It sucks in places where the droplets are smaller because they bead up everywhere but aren't large enough for the wind to push them away quickly. You end up looking through a bunch of microlenses rather than normal rain on the windshield.

Steve442• 9 years ago

I've used RainX intermittently over the years. It's a bit of a faff to put on and also maintain but when it's working well it is truly fantastic, crystal clear vision in the rain. Downsides are it doesn't work well below 40mph and also it can go foggy sometimes. Brilliant stuff though and well worth using if you know it's going to be very wet.

mikro2nd3• 9 years ago

Especially brilliant in those situations where you come up behind heavy trucks. Normally you can't see shit for the clouds of water those leviathans kick up. With Rain-X... no problem. (Shit, I sound like a advert, now. How annoying!)

2almalki3• 9 years ago

I would suggest Aquapel instead (lasts way longer, water starts flying off at lower speeds). I love it. (http://www.aquapel.com/)

Klathmon2• 9 years ago

I love little "niches" like these. So many things in our lives are so filled with "depth" that even extremely observant people will never notice.

Sometimes I just sit back and wonder at what the designers or manufacturers of common things had to deal with.

Perhaps the shape of a mug handle was a point of contention between several people, or the thickness of your desk was the result of a compromise that came from a grueling 4 hour long meeting, or there is an engineer somewhere that is extremely proud of the weeks they spent designing an office chair wheel that won't suck up a cord, or the designer which worked several weekends in a row to completely redesign the shape of the base of a desk lamp so that the regulatory sticker could be placed on the back and not on the front.

It makes me feel better when I feel like I'm wasting time trying out different button shapes and sizes for a stupid menu somewhere deep in an app that nobody will ever really care about.

madvoid• 9 years ago

You should watch some of engineerguy's videos on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/engineerguyvideo/videos. He goes over some of these small details in products and why they are there. It's quite interesting!

ghaff• 9 years ago

In a related vein, back when I was a product manager, I was always struck by how many customers came through who were the #1 manufacturer of toilet seats or plastic milk bottles or whatever in the United States.

csours• 9 years ago

Relevant xkcd: https://www.xkcd.com/1741/

ptrincr• 9 years ago

I get this exact same feeling, a thousand fold when I'm in a supermarket. To think of the amount of effort it has taken to design, manufacture, package, market and transport all those products (edible or not) is a little overwhelming.

FabHK• 9 years ago

Not only relevant, but sure feels like the inspiration for the GP comment.

josefresco• 9 years ago

Having recently "invented" and manufactured a physical product, I can attest to how much time and effort is put into seemingly inconsequential product features. Coming from tech/services like many of you I had no idea how much time I'd spend on minor features that happened to be critical to bringing the product to market.

That being said, when coding software or accomplishing a purely "tech" task, most of my time is usually spent on the "minor details" so I guess it isn't all that much different.

Arizhel8• 9 years ago

Yep, and many times we end up with lousy products despite all this work. Case in point in the xkcd comic: the switch on the lamp cord. What an utterly idiotic idea; it's only done because it's cheaper, not because it's better for the user. In fact, I'd assert that lamps, in general, have some of the very worst product design for any class of modern product. They haven't improved substantially in many decades. We have amazing LED lighting now (as seen on the headlights of new cars, both the DRL systems and also on some cars which use LEDs for the main headlights), but our table/floor lamps are still unchanged from the 1950s, designed around the ancient Edison bulb, with horrible user interfaces (switch on cord where it's hard to reach, or switch next to bulb where you have to stick your arm up inside the lampshade and try to find it in the dark).

booleandilemma• 9 years ago

I recommend the movie Objectified, which is about exactly this.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectified

tormeh2• 9 years ago

On the other hand, a lot of decisions are taken on the spot. Really, an astonishing amount. Of course the higher the volume of the product is, and the harder it is to change, the more effort is put into decisions, and there's seemingly no upper limit to how much effort managers are willing to allocate.

hkmurakami2• 9 years ago

I used to work for Denso (who's heavily quoted in this story) in their research lab. I remember my boss telling me that one of the rubber seals in their HVAC system had something like 17 patents to get the characteristics just right (iirc they're the #1 auto HVAC supplier).

(It fit onto one of the openings in the box-like compartment you can see in the left side of the unit http://www.hpaircraft.com/neon/100_2342a.JPG)

I didn't appreciate it then, but I find modern automobiles to be a minor miracle given how many components go into it and the level of detail that goes into designing each one, both individually and so that they all get nicely packaged together.

mtdewcmu2• 9 years ago

What I think is interesting is that cars are technically complex, yet there are a lot of car companies, each making cars their own way. Usually, products that are highly technically complex are only made by a small number of companies, since R&D is expensive. I don't really know enough to speculate on why the car industry is that way.

kchoudhu• 9 years ago

The history of the disposable coffee cup lid is always what I point to when people tell me that engineers and designers don't earn their pay.

http://philpatton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/05/the-coffee-l...

Convenience comes at a price, and only after a great deal of thought.

mseebach• 9 years ago

The little air hole is almost always too small to allow smooth drinking. A quick poke with the tip of a ball point pen is perfect. Engineering is hereby PROVED INVALID.

flippyhead• 9 years ago

I've heard people say that the space shuttle is so complex no single person can understand it entirely. I feel like my car is likely a candidate now too.

sib• 9 years ago

Or a pencil, for that matter...

I, Pencil (from 1958): http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html

iamatworknow2• 9 years ago

Sometimes I just sit back and wonder at what the designers or manufacturers of common things had to deal with.

I do the same, and probably the one item that I've thought about more often than others is, hilariously, those novelty testicles they sell to attach to your car's trailer hitch. Between design, materials, manufacture, distribution...just how much work goes into truck nuts?

m-i-l• 9 years ago

Funnily enough, I was just thinking the exact opposite this morning - how little design thought must go into some things. It was in relation to the poor user experience I'd just had from the toilets at work. As usual, the poorly designed/configured flush splashed water out of the bowl when I flushed, but I've become adept at jumping back in time. The other more pertinent issue is that the cubicle is so small in relation to the door size that I had a struggle to get out without brushing my coat against the wet splashed bowl. On this issue, I was thinking that it was probably caused by someone just buying some standard sized off-the-shelf components that looked roughly right and whacking them together, e.g. 2m board for sides, and 1m door with toilet protruding 80cm from wall, leaving you 20cm between toilet and open door (note that these are example sizes just to make the point - I didn't actually measure anything). In other words, no-one thought how big the cubicle actually needed to be. I guess there's probably some correlation between design input and cost, i.e. its probably just not worth anyone spending too much time thinking about that sort of thing.

stronglikedan• 9 years ago

I often find bathrooms that were around before ADA [0], and have since been retrofitted, have the worst designs. That's why I try to use the handy-capable stalls, or "suites" as I call them, whenever I have a chance.

Most newer bathroom designs seem sane to me, since they were designed with ADA compliance in mind. Except for airport bathrooms for some reason, where you have to cram yourself and your luggage into a stall that's the same size as any other stall outside of the airport.

[0]https://www.ada.gov/

DigitalJack• 9 years ago

There is an interesting movie about the guy who invented the intermittent wiper mechanics called Flash of Genius.

I was planning to watch that tonight on Netflix.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1054588/

jabo• 9 years ago

Coincidentally, I just watched a good movie called "Flash of Genius" on Netflix yesterday. It's a drama based on the true story of Robert Kearns, the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper. Highly recommend it if you liked this article.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1054588/

kqr2• 9 years ago

I wish adaptive adaptive windshield wiping would become a standard feature, i.e. the frequency automatically adjusts to the amount of rain coming down.

jlgaddis• 9 years ago

My truck has this but I don't know what it's called. I permanently leave the windshield wipers on the first setting. If it isn't raining, they don't operate. As the intensity of the rain vhanges, the wipers automatically adapt.

iamatworknow2• 9 years ago

I think it will soon. I've had my car (a 2017 Toyota Corolla, base model) for about 3 months now and I'm still amazed by some of the features they're now including standard (automatic high beams, lane departure assist, adaptive cruise control). Granted these features don't work quite as well as those I've seen in more expensive cars, but just having them as standard features for a new car under $18k USD is pretty impressive.

ajford• 9 years ago

Adaptive windshield wiping? Shit, I'm just hoping automatic headlights become standard. I had two Camaros, one from the late 90s and one from 2002. They both had auto lights.

My 2008 Prius? Nope. My sister has a 2007 Honda Odyssey, no auto lights either. How much difficulty is it to add a damn photosensor and a switch?

Arizhel8• 9 years ago

Lots of cars come with this now, even near-economy-level ones. It's called "rain-sensing wipers".

WalterBright3• 9 years ago

I never understood what is genius about intermittent wipers.

yellowapple2• 9 years ago

At the time, windshield wipers were controlled by a manifold vacuum, and the speed varied based on how much throttle you were applying. The problem is that this happened in reverse of ideal; at a standstill your wipers would be wiping furiously, and would slow down to near-uselessness as you gave the engine more gas.

The intermittent wiper design not only solved that problem, but paved the way for far greater flexibility when it comes to how fast or slow the wipers should wipe. It also did so with a relatively simple circuit (just charge a capacitor to a certain voltage, then use it to power the motor; adjust the charge rate to adjust the wiper rate). Pretty neat in my book.

Kearns• 9 years ago

Kearns early patents were moisture variable and measured friction between blade and glass. Decreasing delay with increased rain. Automotive's didn't steal that idea?

tyingq3• 9 years ago

For reasons unknown to me, the wipers on US military trucks, like the M35, are air operated. They also have a handle you can use to operate them manually if the pneumatic system fails.

macintux• 9 years ago

I keep hoping someday I'll be fortunate enough to own a classic CJ or military Jeep with (only) hand-operated wipers mounted at the top of the windshield.

Doors, tops, windshield wiper motors...kids don't know how easy they have it these days.

edit: and I suspect the reason they're pneumatic is because they already have air-powered accessories, so that's one fewer motor to break down.

yoavm• 9 years ago

Many parts of trucks and buses are air operated. I have a small bus (converted to a little house-on-wheels) and air pressure is needed for the breaks to work, doors to stay closed etc etc. While I can understand why we use it for breaks, when it comes to wipers and doors I feel someone took the idea too far. Fixing any kind of pressure drop is a lot harder than wiring any electrical engine.

tyingq3• 9 years ago

Yeah, I knew the brakes were pneumatic, but the wipers seemed like an odd choice...the system is bulky with air tubes all around to make it work. And, it's noisy. The military trucks are a little odd in that they are 24 volts instead of the usual 12. That would have perhaps limited off-the-shelf choices for electric wiper motors.

dsfyu404ed• 9 years ago

Because idiots can't burn out an air motor or piston by trying to push snow/ice with them (thereby stalling the motor).

I know that most people here are from SV where corrosion, snow and potholes don't exist but come on, this one should be obvious.

tyingq3• 9 years ago

Not following this. If it were obvious, all of the US military vehicles with pneumatic systems would use pneumatic wipers. They don't. I assume electric wipers could integrate some sort of clutch.

Edit: Apparently, high end electric wiper motors use self-resetting circuit breakers to deal with frozen wipers.

Johnythree• 9 years ago

Many early cars had windscreen wipers which were operated from the engine vacuum.

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=vacuum+operated+windscree....

The disadvantage was that when you floored the pedal to pass a truck, the wipers stopped working, just when you needed them.

Conversely, when you lifted off the throttle, they flapped insanely fast.

Broken_Hippo3• 9 years ago

My father had a '54 chevy with such wipers. He generally only drove it if the whether was nice due to the wipers. The faster he drove, the slower the wipers went.

And on a sidenote, he also had a difficult time finding a mechanic that could work on the car, as many don't know how to work on an engine that old.

TorKlingberg2• 9 years ago

Much of the auto industry is based on buying components like these from one of small group of suppliers. Many are German or Japanese. It has the advantage of making it easier for new comers like Tesla: They can just buy things like wipers from the same companies as everyone else, and focus their engineering efforts on the unique parts.

ec109685• 9 years ago

This article talks about how critical the auto suppliers was to Tesla's formation: http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-the-origin-story-2014-1...

Though, given Tesla is still one of the only new auto makers around, it still is imensly hard to compete against the established companies.

TorKlingberg2• 9 years ago

Very interesting article about the early years of Tesla, but there's a weird jump at the end from the Roadster just shipping, to announcing the obscure D-version of Model S.

amai• 9 years ago

Not complete without mentioning the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_view_screen .

tormeh2• 9 years ago

Wow, always wondered about that. Also sounds like one of those harebrained inventions from the early industrial age: "Tired of your windows getting dirty? Just rotate them at high speed and whoosh the dirt goes!"

dogma11384• 9 years ago

Same, I always thought they were signaling devices since they always appeared to be more reflective (probably has something to do with the rotation) than the windshield.

cromulent• 9 years ago

Years ago when I was karting some people had them for wet races.

https://www.pegasusautoracing.com/productselection.asp?Produ...

Overtonwindow• 9 years ago

Wow ! What an awesomely informative article !!!

WalterBright3• 9 years ago

our wiper group includes 15 or 20 people for North America, and globally it would be several hundred people.

Not sure if that is only designers, or includes test people and manufacturing people. The stabilizer flight controls group on the 757 I worked on consisted of maybe 15 engineers and draftsmen. We did the elevator controls and stabilizer trim system. It was a fair amount of machinery, and there was an awful lot that needed to be taken into account. (The stab trim and elevators are flight critical, meaning it's pretty serious business and nobody wants to make a mistake.)

It took about 3 years.

This did not include the "stress" group which double checked the design, nor the testing and manufacturing people.

dlgeek• 9 years ago

They're a supplier, so I'd bet they're supplying a large number of brands with a huge number of total models, rather than just the one.

alister• 9 years ago

no two cars seeming to have the same configuration

Have you noticed the rear brakes lights on cars? Absolutely every model of car has a different shape: triangle, concentric circles, polka dot pattern, you name it.

I doubt that anyone is the least bit influenced in their car choice by how cool the brake lights look.

I'd like to think that the car companies avoid making a standardized brake light to put a thorn in the side of after-market parts manufacturers. At least that evil explanation makes economic sense.

In reality, I think that car designers do what they like doing -- making new designs. Even in cases where it makes zero difference to the user. Even in cases where a standardized design would be better for everyone[1].

[1] Because of cost, availability (every garage would stock a standard brake light), detection of the standard rear light pattern by collision avoidance systems.

coredog64• 9 years ago

Take another look at the back of RVs and motorhomes. Those companies will frequently reuse an existing rear light package with just a change in orientation.

cardiffspaceman• 9 years ago

When Porsche made an 'affordable' Boxster with the same headlights as a top-of-the-line 911 the snobs that wanted their 911s to be exclusive were upset.

sokoloff• 9 years ago

I think people were more likely (or should have been, IMO) upset about the ugliness of the 996-[1] "fried egg" headlights, not that they were the same as the headlights on the first-gen Boxster.

[1] - 996 was the internal model designation for that generation of 911, which was being designed at the same time as the original 986 series Boxster.

ScottBurson• 9 years ago

I doubt that anyone is the least bit influenced in their car choice by how cool the brake lights look.

Doesn't seem so farfetched to me. For instance, I particularly like the taillights on the latest Honda Civic. A lot of recent BMWs have nice-looking taillights too. And I can recall, as a kid, thinking the taillights on my mom's 1962 Ford Thunderbird were particularly cool, styled as they were to suggest jet engines (at least, that's what they looked like to me at age 7). Oh, and then there were the sequential turn signals on our 1967 Mercury Cougar...

Anyway, taillights are certainly not the only important stylistic element on the car, but I wouldn't dismiss them completely either.

chiph• 9 years ago

Like or hate the Cadillac Escalade, you have to admit the thin vertical taillights from the bumper almost to the roof certainly evoke their cars from the "tailfin" era, like the 1969 Eldorado.

Johnny555• 9 years ago

I doubt that anyone is the least bit influenced in their car choice by how cool the brake lights look.

Of course they are, it's part of the car's styling and car manufacturers spend a lot of money on car design. The shape of the tail lights helps dictate the shape of the car's body.

If you think taillights have no effect on styling, imagine a 1960's Mustang tail light on a modern Tesla:

http://www.oldcarsguide.com/ford/mustang/images/1968-mustang... http://gas2.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/lighted-t.jpg

Kluny2• 9 years ago

I doubt that anyone is the least bit influenced in their car choice by how cool the brake lights look.

Have you seen the taillights on Dodge Chargers? http://o.aolcdn.com/dims-global/dims3/GLOB/legacy_thumbnail/...

Or on the Mustangs of that generation?

http://www.allfordmustangs.com/forums/attachments/2011-2014-...

I don't know if either of those are enough to influence my buying choices, but I know for sure if I was going to get a late-model muscle car, it wouldn't be a Camaro - http://gmauthority.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/2014-...

robin_reala• 9 years ago

You’re in luck if you own a McLaren F1, because they standardised their brake lights on the same model used by the Bova Futura bus: http://jalopnik.com/the-mclaren-f1-used-the-rear-lamps-of-a-...

parasubvert2• 9 years ago

There are literally huge debates about minor things like this in car magazine reviews, followed by tens of thousands of comments on various automotive forums debating the finer aesthetics of different head or tail light designs. It can get downright vitriolic: one person's beautiful is another's fugly.

A couple years ago I drove a car with very distinctive tail lights (the Mercedes CLA AMG: http://images.caricos.com/m/mercedes-benz/2014_mercedes-benz...

I found the tail lights to be the first thing anyone spoke of when talking about the car - in person most people said they loved them, online many people hated them except for the base of customers that loved the car. And no amount of performance data would convince them to drive the car - the tail lights were THE deal breaker.

I've had similar debates over he colour of mud flaps I had on my old Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution (they were red, on a metallic orange car). Again, people online in enthusiast forums felt I was mentally ill and they would never drive such a monstrosity, it was just a personal preference for me. The colour for them was the deal breaker. http://www.zercustoms.com/news/images/Mitsubishi/Lancer-Evol...

Just like some won't drive a green car even if it has amazing stats.

The moral is: Most people don't think like engineers, for better or worse.

mikro2nd3• 9 years ago

As explained to me by someone who runs a (large, high-end) panel-shop:

In reality its because "Razor Blade Model". Since you can only get the correct lens/housing from the manufacturer, they can charge what they like. Since your insurance is paying, neither you nor the panel-shop give a fuck about the cost. Extremely high margins for the manufacturers. Same goes for bumpers.

costcopizza• 9 years ago

I'm surprised they didn't mention Mercedes-Benz and their monowiper that they used for a while.

frik• 9 years ago

I was about to write the same. I quite liked the monowiper.

bluetomcat2• 9 years ago

What do you expect from a US-centric article? Oh, do you remember those cute and niche European imports from Mercedes, the W124?

spuz• 9 years ago

Do the US regulations mentioned in the article prohibit the monowiper design?

De_Delph• 9 years ago

As a kid I was fascinated by the monowiper system in our W124 estate! Still the best system imho

Neliquat3• 9 years ago

Remember headlight wipers?

Rapzid• 9 years ago

Yes, take a look at them before you go in for an inspection. Lest they tear them and try to gouge you for replacements because they are suddenly streaking.

tiatia• 9 years ago

Not really but I looked at my windshield a lot. Where have all the insects gone? The decline in insect biomass is insane! http://e360.yale.edu/features/insect_numbers_declining_why_i...

Shivetya• 9 years ago

about the idea people can spend entire careers design something like a wiper system. industrial and mechanical engineers never cease to amaze me. part of the reason I am a computer engineer is I didn't have the patience and such for those. the amount people in those fields affect every day life is undervalued and underestimated, nearly everything you see, touch, and use, involves those skills.

as for wipers and windshields, damn people clean your windshield weekly at least. being a motorcyclist I tend to spot certain elements about the cars and people I see on my trips and dirty windshields annoy me and many are dirty on the inside more than outside. that affects your safety and others!

3princip• 9 years ago

Interesting read. There really is a lot of thought that goes into these things. Bought a set of silicone/rubber wipers the other day. They were covered in a very fine gray dust which at first seemed to be like spray paint.

So without thinking I started to "clean" them. Half way through it came to me there was too much of the stuff to be by accident and there was no marketing reason for it to be light gray.

Couldn't think of what to google at first? Painted wipers? Dusty wipers? Then I tried graphite powder + wipers because it resembled what a ground up pencil might look like. Bingo.

Apparently, it's a lubricant to prevent squeaking, shouldn't be disturbed before being placed on the vehicle. Of course, I had already wiped it almost clean off of one wiper. Felt a bit stupid afterwards.

Good news is wipers don't squeak.

Have you looked at your windshield wipers lately?

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